


Astronaut Ice Cream — Doesn’t Taste Much Like I Remember It, Really

by thatsrightdollface



Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: (I wrote this a while ago as part of a challenge for myself — more details in the notes!), Character Study, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Healing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-12
Updated: 2020-04-12
Packaged: 2021-03-02 02:42:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,739
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23617705
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thatsrightdollface/pseuds/thatsrightdollface
Summary: Luther and Allison eat old Spaceboy merchandise together — astronaut ice cream, after so much of their world has come undone.
Relationships: Allison Hargreeves & Luther Hargreeves, Allison Hargreeves/Luther Hargreeves
Comments: 2
Kudos: 21





	Astronaut Ice Cream — Doesn’t Taste Much Like I Remember It, Really

**Author's Note:**

> Sooo, I invented a game/challenge for myself where I connected astronaut ice cream to three (very different) characters I like, all of which happen to be excited about space!!! :D The stories are disconnected. Only the strange chalky ice cream unites us. (And the fact that I’m posting all of ‘em on Kaito Momota from Danganronpa’s birthday. Also the anniversary of the first shuttle launch. Happy birthday, Kaito! Happy anniversary of the first shuttle launch, everybody else! Also Easter, if you celebrate Easter!)
> 
> I hope you have fun with this story, if you read it!!! (I also hope you're staying safe, and having a lovely day. I got some of my astronaut ice cream-related info from a Mental Floss article, as a note!!!)

There had been Spaceboy-themed astronaut ice cream packs sold in comic book stores, when Luther Hargreeves was a kid, just like there’d been snappy tin lunch boxes and masks of his face for strangers to wear at Halloween. It had felt like pretty serious business, watching his dad market the Umbrella Academy back then. Luther never dressed up for Halloween himself, or carried a lunch to school. He barely even got to try regular ice cream, back in the day, nevermind the freeze-dried astronaut kind. But he understood the importance of his brand. Spaceboy was a symbol more than he was the kind of guy who shopped for novelty snacks. 

Luther was Number One of the Umbrella Academy, after all, and he’d heard his merchandise sold fairly well. That probably meant Reginald Hargreeves was proud of him. Presumably? So you see: serious business. When Number Four — (Klaus, of course, once their newest mom decided to give them names like other children might have) — laughed about the whole “astronaut ice cream” thing being a sham, given that nobody had actually taken the sweet chalky slabs to space yet, Luther'd borrowed a pack to take up on his next mission. He hid it inside one of the so-many pockets of his space suit, down by his ankle, and told himself he’d put it back on the comic book shop’s display just as soon as he made it home. No dice, though. The thing crumbled to pieces inside its wrapper, and Luther split the ashy slivers of it with Allison secretly, whisper-laughing together in the middle of the night. He should have thanked Klaus, really, except the thought never occurred to him back then.

Why hadn’t Luther been more afraid of getting caught, "borrowing" something like that? He had felt justified, maybe. What had _that_ felt like, even? Everything had been so simple, once. The broken pieces of astronaut ice cream had melted on Luther’s tongue, sitting there with Allison in the dark, light and easy as his words always used to get around her. Number Three of the Umbrella Academy. The Rumor. It wasn’t supposed to be so difficult to talk to Allison, like it was now that they’d spent too many strange long years growing apart into strange new people. Astronaut ice cream had been so sweet Luther almost couldn’t believe it. The idea of Allison smiling at him without worried, tired eyes was almost like that now. Not the sort of thing he was supposed to believe in. 

It was hard to imagine some of the corners of their world Allison had seen, by that point. Glitzy red carpets with her dresses hanging movie star sultry off her shoulders and crystalline hairpins arranged in a way that made something incredibly difficult look easy as telling a pretty lie. Telling a lie and making it the truth, just the way Allison had always been able to do. She spoke so _knowingly_ , when Luther saw her on TV. He’d written her letters about it, when he was suddenly the only one left in the Umbrella Academy manor house. Not “I Miss You” letters, mind you. More like “Merry Christmas! Hope You’re Well” letters. There was a distance stretching farther than the country between them, between the east coast and California. A distance that meant Allison’s husband, and all their disagreements before she left, and those swanky Hollywood bars where Luther wouldn’t even have the faintest idea what to order. You couldn’t get milk or pancakes or astronaut ice cream, not in places like that. Allison would’ve been embarrassed by him. And that was even _before_ Spaceboy’s human heart stopped beating, and then he got sent to the moon for ten years. So changed. So used to endless silence. 

There was still moon dust ground into the soles of Luther’s boots, just now. There was still a poem crumpled up in his pocket that he’d written while sitting alone in his base, thinking maybe he’d be alone for ten more years, too, but it would be worth it if it made his dad proud. Just more Spaceboy merchandise, in a twisted way. Just more of Luther earning his place, and his name, the way he’d always tried to do. 

Things couldn’t help but be different now. Reginald Hargreeves was dead. None of Luther’s reports from the moon had ever even been opened, and the one to find him bent over all those useless samples, all those scribbled letters (“I Miss You” letters this time, but also “I Admire You More Than I Hate Being Alone” letters) was Allison herself. Number Three, with her lips hanging open just a little bit, ready with words Luther knew he would trust, even having heard her lie to all the bad guys throughout their lives. That was what the Rumor did: she remade your truth. But Allison, Allison who told jokes in the dark so Luther would relax after a day of trying (failing?) to be the team’s leader, _she_ had all the trust Luther knew how to give anyone, anymore. She had to. 

Allison had only just recently seen Luther’s changed, inhuman skin for the first time, but she still looked so worried about him now. She looked him full in the face, like she wasn’t thinking of him as an alien, an animal, a stranger. Nothing like that. When Luther told Allison what was wrong — how he hadn’t been marketable, hadn’t been needed anymore, had let down the man he gave up everything else to please — Allison didn’t flinch away like he’d become damaged goods. Dirty, now, the way he’d felt for years. Maybe Allison felt like she was dirty, too. There were problems she needed to fix. She’d been telling Luther about them, bit by bit. Trust she’d broken, with her tender, pretty, effortless lies. Luther couldn’t help but think it would be okay in the end, somehow, though a wiser part of him thought maybe nothing was ever just that. “Okay.” Maybe there was always something beneath the surface, like the sad secret behind astronaut ice cream. It got gift shops a lot of money, and sometimes it had Spaceboy’s face plastered on it, but that didn’t mean it actually belonged to the stars. 

Eventually, Allison helped Luther heave himself to his feet, and she took his hand in both of hers to do it. Had her fingers always been so breakable? They got out of there — out of the manor, out of sight of the official staring Umbrella Academy portrait — and before they left Allison ducked away to slip something into her purse. 

Maybe Luther thought Allison would want to go someplace he wouldn’t understand. A restaurant where he’d be too out-of-the-loop to know how to tip properly. A dancing place, where he wouldn’t know any of the steps and might actually break bones in her foot if he slipped up even once and — it was a horrible thought — accidentally stepped on her. But no. Allison took Luther to a park, and before she bought him hot dogs and sat on a bench with him... patiently, forgivingly, like he wasn’t that embarrassing after all... she showed him what was in her bag. 

“It’s harder to find Spaceboy brand merch nowadays than it used to be,” Allison said, slowly, “But I always tried. I got one of these astronaut ice cream bars of yours for Claire, a while back, but I just couldn’t give it to her in the end.” 

Luther turned the astronaut ice cream bar over in his new, enormous hands, and murmured, “Thanks for thinking about me,” to Allison, because he couldn't come up with anything better to say. And Allison nudged his arm; she said, “Of course. I hung _every one_ of your Christmas notes on the fridge. You always sounded so formal, Luther... I never understood why Diego called you ‘stiff’ until I saw those Christmas notes.”

“Really?” Luther asked. “But I froze up during interviews all the time.”

Allison reached over and slid the astronaut ice cream bar out of Luther’s hands. He didn’t resist her; he assumed she was planning to return it to her purse. Like putting a piece of the past back in its place. Instead, she pried the crinkly bag open, offering him a familiar conspiratorial smile. “Hey, do you think this stuff expires?”

“Um. It’s freeze-dried, so... I don’t _think_ it does?” That felt like the sort of thing Luther was really supposed to know, being Spaceboy and all. But Allison had already broken off a piece of the bar — from the strawberry side, chocolate, vanilla and strawberry, arranged in a row — and put it in her mouth before Luther got much farther than “Um.”

“It tastes different than I remember,” Allison said. “But not completely.” She offered Luther the rest of the strawberry stripe, then, and they were side-by-side again, with so much of the distance closing up between them. Had it always been as easy as smiling warmly at Allison, smiling in a way that wasn’t worried and tired his own self? Surely not. 

Luther let the astronaut ice cream fade into a sugary blur on his tongue, thick and syrupy, left over from long ago. It was different, yeah. But everything was. That would have to be as “Okay” as anything could get.

Even when the universe rewrote itself, next, like one of the Rumor’s lies coming horribly true... even when that night dancing in the park was smeared away like sidewalk chalk in the rain... it just meant Allison still had some of Luther’s old Spaceboy brand astronaut ice cream to carry around in her purse. Maybe he wouldn’t know it at first, of course. Maybe he’d make some painful choices along the way, and maybe the moon would split into a thousand pieces, and maybe the world would almost end. Yeah. Nothing was every guaranteed to be easy. Nothing was ever guaranteed to be okay. 

But Luther would find out about that astronaut ice cream again in good time, and they would eat it together, in a new way, no matter how the story went. It was a simple thing, like the promise of a Christmas note with too much left unsaid hanging on a fridge, but it was a promise all the same. No more, and no less. It wouldn’t taste quite the same when the story was through, but then again: nothing would, right?


End file.
